Too often I hear people say ‘ South Korea ’ and ‘ emerging market ’ in the same
sentence, ” said Rich Wickham, the global head of Microsoft ’ s Windows games
business. “ When it comes to gaming, Korea is the developed market, and it ’ s the
rest of the world that ’ s playing catch-up. When you look at gaming around the
world, Korea is the leader in many ways. It just occupies a different place in the
culture there than anywhere else. (Schiesel 2006, 1)
Online gaming has grown rapidly around the world over the past several
years. While many countries — from those in the West, such as the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, to developing countries,
including China, Taiwan, and South Korea (hereafter Korea) — have
initiated modern information technologies and telecommunications networks,
a few Asian countries, including Korea and China, lead the world
in the development of online games. Unlike other cultural products, such
as fi lm and television programs, for which Western countries have dominated
the global market, a few Asian countries such as Korea and China
compete with major Western software developers and publishers in the
global market. Among these countries, Korea has shown impressive
progress in the development of online game software — more so than any
other country in the early twenty-fi rst century. As the largest game sector,
the sales of domestic online games had soared as much as 56%, from
$2.24 billion in 2007 to $3.49 billion in 2009 (Korea Creative Content
Agency 2009).
